Scenes from Early Life

by Philip Hensher (Faber)

This novel, written in the voice of the author’s Dhaka-born husband, focusses on the period of the Bangladesh Liberation War, in 1971. Saadi, the youngest in a well-to-do Bengali family, recounts his earliest memories with Proustian detail—a candy seller making “those yellow calligraphic sweets that look like a circular signature in Arabic.” But there is an uneasy undercurrent. A chapter titled “How I Was Allowed to Eat As Much As I Liked” reveals that Saadi was fed cake whenever he cried, so as not to attract the attention of soldiers patrolling outside. Hensher writes most poignantly about Saadi’s grandfather, who, when the family is forced to clear the shelves of any banned materials, tells them to imagine they are packing for a long journey: “Imagine we’re travelling to England, and won’t be able to unpack any books for months, or even years.” ♦

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